Saturday, March 15, 2008

If Diplomacy Fails?

Who are they kidding? Diplomacy has failed! There’s a lot of talk about us going to war or not going to war with Iran and a lot if people say “If diplomacy fails we will.” After three rounds of UN sanctions against Iran and Iran continuing to say that nothing will stop them from enriching uranium, diplomacy has failed. There is nothing else we want to reach diplomatically other than Iran to stop enriching Uranium before they have enough to build a nuclear bomb. If Iran has announced they will not do this than there is not much room for diplomacy, in fact all that can be done is to repeat the same things we have already done that have not worked. Once Iran has enough uranium (some say as soon as the end of this year) there’s no going back. Creating the uranium is the hard part the rest is not simple but could be done it seems without too much effort. We have tried for three or more years to get diplomacy to work with Iran and now we have less than one year left.

Now the question left is will Israel or the United States attack Iran? We will obviously not attack Iran with ground troops because of the many problems with such an attack so lets look at the feasibility of bombing Iran. Regardless of the headlines of the NIE not being true and even some authors trying to back out of it Bush seems to have lost the political capital that he believes he needs to do anything. Israel has said in the past that we will act alone if necessary. Recently Israel has been saying that Iran is not just an Israeli problem. This is true but it seems they are really pushing hard to get others to help them strike Iran. The Israeli president Shimon Perez (who has little authority) has said that Israel will not act alone, but when asked if Prime Minister Olmert was in agreement with that statement he avoided the question. I think this means that Bush has made it clear that we will probably not strike Iran unless they commit a very major provocation, and that Israel is trying to change his mind. So I think the U.S. attacking Iran is not likely.Israel has proven that they will defend themselves and that will attack first if they thing they must. The biggest question is, does Israel have the capability to strike Iran? It is known that we have sold them bunker busting missiles that will be needed to attack the underground nuclear facilities. The U.S. has proven that it will provide Israel with some means of missile defense either by selling them to them or by having our warships with the aegis class missile defense system nearby. This would be needed when Iran, Hezbollah or others respond to the attack with missiles. The biggest question though is, can Israel manage such a long-range mission? Israel’s jets can not fly the distance to Iran and back without refueling. A paper written by a two doctoral candidates at MIT entitled “Osirak Redux” details all of the technical details on the feasibility of an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Their conclusion was that it could be reasonably done. Israel can do it it’s just a matter of do they think it’s necessary? I think they do, but on the other hand I would not be surprised if they don’t and Iran becomes a nuclear nation. If this happens Iran may not announce it but it will be known.

Monday, March 3, 2008

Face value predictions

Some people say that when looking at what will happen next in world events that we can simply look at what leaders have said and done already and take what has been said at face value. Basically this is Occam’s razor, that the simplest solution is the most likely. So rather than enter into the discussion weather the simplest answer is the most likely, lets take a look at a few things that have happened or things that people have said and see what the future may hold.

In October 2005 Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmdinejad said Israel must be wiped off the map. Now some have said this is a bad translation but he said this at “The World Without Zionism” conference. In January of 2007 Ahmadinejad said that the United States and Israel will soon come to an end. And in the past few days the Iranian president called Israel a dirty microbe.

In February of this year the commander of Iran’s revolutionary guards predicted that Hezbollah would soon destroy Israel by radiation therapy. Syria recently said they would have revenge for the assassination of Imad Mughniyah for which they believe Israel was responsble.

Iran continues to enrich uranium for a nuclear program which it says is for peacefull purposes even though they have no apparent need for nuclear energy. It makes me wonder what they mean when they say peacefull purposes. Iran has said they expect an attack on their nuclear facilities. And Israel and the US have said they would not allow Iran to go nuclear. Israel has a history of backing up their word when it comes to this. Israel has attacked nuclear facilities in Iraq and Syria. Iran said if there nuclear facilities were attacked they would respond more decisively.
These are just pieces of the puzzle but at face value it appears that we can expect a larger war with Israel and her allies against Iran and her allies and proxies